Thursday Mashup (2/17/11)

I know we just can’t get enough of more bogus polling analysis from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm, and he delivers again here…

President Obama's done a lot of talking recently about Winning the Future. Trouble is, he's not. Politically.

At this moment -- 57% of the way through a first term with only 628 days left until the 2012 presidential election -- the Democrat can only tie any conceivable Republican candidate (according to a new Gallup poll).

Oh, and did you know that Obama’s support among 18-to-34-year-old voters has “evaporated” from 63 to 51 percent?

In response, Media Matters tells us the following here…

The question didn't assess Obama's standing vis-a-vis "any conceivable Republican candidate" -- it assessed his standing versus a generic Republican candidate about whom respondents know nothing. That's pretty much the opposite of "any conceivable Republican candidate."

Though I will acknowledge that whoever emerges from the Repug field with the presidential nomination will have their party’s support locked up I’m sure based on this.

Next, as noted here, Dem U.S. House Rep Betty McCollum of Minnesota wants to cut the Army’s budget for NASCAR sponsorship (awwww).

Well, considering that all of our services achieved 100 percent of their recruiting goals last year (with the Marine Corps Reserve hitting 125 percent), except for the Army National Guard (which achieved 95 percent) as noted here, as a taxpayer, I have no problem with saving some greenbacks on this (let some corporate sponsors pick up the tab – if they’re advertising at NASCAR events, somehow I’m sure they can afford to pony up some extra bucks).

Update 2/18/11: Like flatulence after indigestion - nice (h/t Daily Kos)

In addition, “Z on TV” is back to dump on MSNBC again, telling us here, among other things, that “all of MSNBC prime time is sinking in the ratings.”

I have no reliable data on the recent ratings of “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell, but if he’s having a tough time, I’m not surprised. To be fair, he has to fill the shoes of the network’s marquee performer who has since departed, and he also has to build up his own audience brand loyalty at the same time (that’s why I thought Ed Schultz would have been a better fit for the 8-9 slot, since he has a longer history of attracting and keeping a media audience and he seems to take to the role of a pit bull for the left, if you will, more naturally, though O’Donnell is no slouch when it comes to generating controversy either).

But are Rachel Maddow’s ratings “sinking”? Not according to these recent data, (and yes, that is grammatically correct) which shows her winning the 9-10 slot over Piers Morgan of CNN (and for Zurawik to compare Maddow or anyone else to Fix Noise, ratings wise, is typically disingenuous since they usually win those prime time slots anyway, sadly enough).

Also, this Daily Kos post tells us that Current TV, Keith Olbermann’s new home, is in a very similar position viewership-wise to MSNBC prior to the first episode of “Countdown” in 2003 (so much for Keith being “newly marginalized by his move to Current TV”).

Zurawik is a typically loathsome corporate media shill who worships at the altar of his “betters,” particularly a certain 44th-president-baiting Fix Noise bully and loudmouth (as noted, with other stuff, from the third bullet here).

Finally, James Taranto of the Murdoch Street Journal opined here about the brutality that CBS News correspondent Lara Logan suffered recently in Egypt (I really wanted to avoid saying anything about this, but as usual, the wingnuts somersaulted over the line of decency – I hope all goes well for Logan, and I hope those responsible for anything she suffered are drawn and quartered and/or fed to the buzzards).

Taranto is actually fair to a point here, criticizing not only someone named Nir Rosen, about whom I know nothing, but his ideological fellow travelers also for taking their commentary on this to extremes (though I didn’t see anything about this, this, this, this, this or this...the final link includes some of the prior ones). Towards the end of his post, though, Taranto manages to equate Logan’s ordeal with criticism of Sarah Palin, as well as Bill Maher’s recent joke about Elisabeth Hasselbeck in which he mentioned Logan.

I put up the video of Lawrence O’Donnell’s interview with Maher here in which this was noted, and I can assure you that, had Maher or the rest of us known the true nature of Logan’s ordeal, no one would have been joking over it. And it is typically despicable for Taranto or anyone else to suggest otherwise.